Archive note: This text comes from the old archive of Nomika Epilekta and is preserved with care for historical and informational reading.

One of the “good” things about the economic crisis is the understanding of the irreparable damage caused by monstrous bureaucracy [Nomika Epilekta: “Greece, the bastion of bureaucracy”]. Everyone, competent authorities, incompetent ones and the administered alike, condemns bureaucracy and its labyrinthine and useless systems, which torment people without being abolished. On the contrary, they expand and escalate… The failed government that has departed had announced the drastic and immediate restriction of bureaucracy through the establishment of “electronic governance”, which proved to be neither electronic nor governance. It was a farcical comedy staged by amateurs, untalented, indecisive and incapable. Many articles by prominent people, journalists and non-journalists, turn against bureaucracy, condemning the employees who display their irresponsibility while fortified behind bureaucratic procedures and criticizing the incapable politicians who, through useless appointments of surplus personnel, “staffed” bureaucracy and made it untouchable. Most of the tortures inflicted by bureaucrats on citizens are rightly attributed to the existence of useless “procedures”, which shameless guilds, with strong representation in parliament, and immoral politicians imposed. A leading bureaucratic and useless procedure is the compulsory hiring of lawyers in real-estate sales, with the corresponding fees paid by the contracting parties, and the similar compulsory appearance, in the capacity of “supervising engineer”, of the engineer who intervenes at the town-planning authority for the issuance of a building permit, regardless of whether he supervises or disappears from the project. In the event of the complete disappearance of the civil engineer, an entire procedure is provided for replacing him with another “supervisor”. The originals submitted in the file at the competent town-planning authority for the building permit are often lost and, because of bureaucracy, the person responsible for the misappropriation is not found, nor is any sanction imposed. Beyond these, there are other such torturous procedures for the “revision” or revisions of permits, with the interested owners of the project having to pay significant sums of money. Bureaucracy is adored and maintained by other guilds too, beyond the “scientific” ones. These are the hermetically closed guilds of taxi drivers, truck owners and other rulers of the roads, likable to some people who deviate from the normal. Also “likable” are the guilds of employees of DEI and other supposedly “public-benefit organizations”, which constitute a state within the state. These are state-controlled public limited companies whose only “public benefit” is the provision of money to those buried inside them, most of whom, instead of working, serve their term and serve their bureaucracy. Recently, under the GAP government, a special law was passed, one of thousands, providing for the electronic establishment of commercial companies. Instead of acceleration, however, the monster of bureaucracy triumphed again, because only one notary, out of the thousands, was found with incomplete knowledge of the new procedure, and even he could not carry out his work because of the lack of information among the army of competent and incompetent employees, who, according to the principle “Manolios changed, and put his clothes on differently”, seized by bureaucratic frenzy, asked, and still ask with mania, for more documents, papers, than they had asked for before the law was passed. Thus, a period of several months was needed to establish a single-member limited liability company which, according to the law and to common sense, would have been established on the same day! Because of bureaucracy, the state mechanism has gone mad and, for this reason, grants “pensions” to perfectly healthy disabled persons, to very young pensioners who cannot be located, to deceased persons who, if they were alive, would have exceeded the one hundred and tenth or even the one hundred and thirtieth year, and to various improbable categories of fraudsters, financing with torrents of money our president, who rides on democracy, the fifty of the company of ministers and deputy ministers, the blissful shops of the parties and the various party appointees. These fraudsters often flock to useless protest demonstrations or hypocritically approve them, struggling to preserve their loot and their share of the extremely expensive borrowed money flowing into the country. They make insulting gestures, curse, bark and …become indignant. By following the production of laws, circulars and provisions by the ministry that deals with finances alone, one can perceive the swelling of bureaucracy maintained by the surplus and useless salaried idlers. An experienced columnist, Stelios Stavridis, in a recent article of 05.02.2012, proposes the establishment of a “supreme authority”, whose object will be the fight against bureaucracy, intervening in every circumstance and checking all laws, presidential decrees and ministerial decisions, so that the required simplification of bureaucratic systems may be achieved. The object of this authority will be the immediate application of laws and the upgrading of public administration, so that simple, brief and practical solutions are given. Such an authority, so that it is not added to the various authorities and powers that maintain the chaos of bureaucrats and mandarins, will be equipped with unlimited power to intervene and impose immediate and practical solutions. If it also has powers to punish those who persist and go astray, its work will be crowned with success. Intelligent solutions are needed from experienced and honest specialists, so that the monstrous offspring of bureaucracy may be exterminated and, for this final effort to succeed, the immediate expulsion is required of the thousands of salaried idlers who are fed, without working, at the Prytaneion of the collapsing State.